Don't do your washing in Salzburg

I’ll never forget our brief time in Salzburg. It was the first ‘hotel’ Mel and I had booked in a long time. After almost 4 months on the road we were beat. We thought we’d splash out and book a hotel in the middle of Salzburg; just relax and enjoy some niceties like not sharing a toilet with 27 other people.

All our clothes were dirty, and I mean we had nothing. I don’t think I was even wearing underwear at this stage. We assumed that the hotel would have a washing machine and dryer so we’d saved up all our dirty clothes. We wandered down to reception asking for directions to the laundry but to our discontent they did not have one. We were told that the nearest one was only a little way down the road.

I thought, who needs a laundry-matt when we can wash our clothes with soap in our bath. This plan was a huge failure. It proved almost impossible to clean the clothes and when it came time to drying we were told off for hanging our clothes over the hotel balcony.

So we gathered up our wet clothes from the bathtub and headed for the nearest laundry-matt. We lugged our backpacks full of dirty clothes down the street. After walking for at least half an hour we thought we had gone too far, but then just ahead, almost like a mirage was the laundry-matt. Clean clothes were not far away, or so we thought! 

It was a public holiday and the place was closed, so we trudged back to the hotel and asked for a different laundry-matt. We were then told to get a bus, then another bus to the next laundry-matt. We’d come this far, we were determined to get some clean underwear! We made it to the bus stop. It was 10pm and dark at this stage. This coupled with the bus drivers broken English, was making things even more difficult. Not surprisingly we had caught the wrong bus.

All we could do was wait it out and hope that the bus ended up back where we’d begun. By some miraculous twist of fate the bus drove past a 24hr laundry-matt. We practically threw ourselves off the bus and raced over. We’d done it. There was nothing more satisfying that taking those hot, fresh and clean jocks and socks out of the dryer an hour later.

We went back to the bus stop and made our way home. But our luck turned again. We got off the bus and had not begun our 30-minute walk back to the hotel when it started to rain. We were soaked and to top it off most of our newly dried clothes were also victims of mother nature’s tyranny.

At this point we really needed some cheering up, and it came; in the form of beer. We ran into some locals sheltered in a bar that had been operating as part of a street festival along the same street as our hotel. We shared a few drinks, drowned our sorrows and had a laugh; a good way to end the day. 

So we finally arrived back at our hotel with our wet and clothes, no better off than when we had begun our journey but at least we had a story to tell. That was our little trip to Salzburg. I nearly forgot to mention we visited a brewery; Stiegl, where I found my new favourite beer. 

A street festival below our hotel balcony